Coal and Sugarplums
by fragrantfields
Summary: Andy and Sharon's post-Nutcracker phone call. Everyone likes happy endings for the holidays, but everyone also likes people to be held accountable for their actions. My attempt at seeking a balance (even if just for myself) after considering many, many POVs about this. 3rd genre would be "humor" if that had been an option.


She wasn't up for this face to face. Not that she couldn't do it...she'd handled herself just fine through the play, the teasing good nights afterwards, and the short, level talk about boundaries to her new son on the way home.

She _could_ do this face to face, but damn it, she didn't feel like it.

Didn't feel like seeing hope and disappointment and god knows what else all over his face. Or have to think about her body language, or his. She deserved the break of stretching out, being comfortable, and speaking her mind. She grabbed her phone off the nightstand.

He answered on the first ring. She imagined him watching the black screen, wondering if he should call or not, and her first pangs of sympathy slipped in. This certainly wasn't what he'd been hoping for, either. His own fault, but…

"Andy? I know it's late, but I thought we should talk."

"Yeah, I know. I figured this was coming. I, uh...I have some stuff together. Your mom's _Cooking of the British Isles_ book, the one about step-grandparenting-"

"Andy, that was a gift."

"Well, I didn't know...anyway, I'll bring the stuff you lent me into work Monday. I can meet you in the parking deck if you don't want to do this in the office."

He sounded so dejected. Sharon had a perverse urge to laugh but tamped it down. He'd certainly had plenty of practice with break-ups, from the sound of it.

"First, I never lend books. Go ahead and hang on to those," she said. "And quit talking like we're a couple in a break-up. We're _not_, and we're not."

She heard a hint of hope in his voice. "When you say that second 'we're not,' does that mean what I think-what I hope it means?"

"Oh, now you'd like some clarity on our relationship?" Her voice dripped sarcasm. "Welcome to my world, Lieutenant."

"Sharon, if I could take all this back...I never should have let Nicole and the kids go so long thinking we were together. I told you that. It was pride, I guess, and...I didn't get into this in front of her and Rusty, but some of that was wishful thinking" His tone softened. "And I guess that makes me kind of a creep."

She rolled her eyes. If this had been a guy she _had_ been dating, she'd call out this self-flagellating crap for what it was and delete his number from her contacts. After she'd gotten her things back.

But this was Andy...the one who got it when she felt like she'd failed a family. Or when she needed to grieve over a young Jane Doe. Her throat tightened. Why did he have to go and screw this up?

"You're not a creep, Andy. What you _did_ was creepy, and now I'm going to be reviewing our time together in my head, wondering what signs I missed, what you'd really been thinking...and yes, that really pisses me off. You know, if you'd just said something-"

That certainly ended the self-pity.

"What, like 'Hey, Sharon, I think you're amazing, I wish I could just kiss you good-night after dinner without it being weird, and by the way, do you ever think of me as more than a friend'?" He took a deep breath. "I'm a pretty brave guy in the line of duty, but taking that kind of chance? That's stuff there's no coming back from, once it's on the table."

She shouldn't be smiling at this. Maybe she was just happy he was as uncomfortable as she had been. There was something else, though, something she liked about what she was hearing.

"But it's on the table now."

He sighed. "Remember in grade school, when you could just pass a note to somebody you liked, and ask 'Do you like me?' and there'd be a 'yes' box and a 'no' box? I miss that sometimes."

The image of a silver-haired, suspender-wearing ten-year-old Andy Flynn came to her, and this time she couldn't hold her laughter back. She could just see him, pacing and grousing to a ten-year-old Provenza, wishing the object of his affection would hurry up and let him know how she felt.

"I'm not sure that would make things any easier. But yes, at least we'd know where we stood." She made herself more comfortable. This could take longer than she'd thought. "I have to admit, part of why I figured you saw this like I did was, well...I'm not your type."

The line was silent for a second, then his voice came back, touched with confusion. "Not...my type? How'd you figure that?"

"I've heard about your escapades over the years, you know. I assumed you went for much younger women. I'll withhold my opinions on that right now, but I thought that's why it was so easy for us to just be friends."

More silence. Maybe she should have done this face to face. She suspected the look on his was priceless right now.

"You thought...I thought you were too old for me?" His voice hit a range unusual for him at the last part.

"Um-hm. Going by what I knew of your track record, it made sense at the time."

"Jeez-be right back, going to hit my head against the wall a few times. Are you _serious_?"

"Can I be blunt, Andy?" She didn't wait for his response. This had been building up longer than she realized.

"Frankly, if I'm around a man in social settings for months, he knows I'm legally separated, and there's the usual amount of private moments, my default is to assume there's going to be some...intimacy. If not, if it's all shoulder-touching and pecks on the cheek, I'm gonna go with "he's not into me." And that's perfectly fine. I like having friends. I like going to dinner, plays, and baseball games with friends."

She took a deep breath.

"But I have to be able to trust people I call friends. No hidden agendas, no lies of omission, and no using me like you did without me being in on it." She squirmed down into the covers, ignoring his sputters on the other end of the line. "I was okay with helping you out at Nichole's wedding. Last year's 'Nutcracker' was on the weird side, but I at least knew you needed my help in some way and I wanted to be there for you."

"And you were, Sharon. I really thought that would be it, pretty much. Well, okay, a part of me did think about how nice it would be if you were really, y'know _with_ me. But you're my boss, and…" He sighed again, and she just knew he was raking his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end.

"And, as long as we're being blunt," he continued, "I figured if you wanted anything more, you'd let me know. I mean, yeah, I hear you on the intimacy thing, okay? I never really saw myself as exactly your type, either."

She could almost hear him struggling to gather his thoughts. This kind of talk didn't come naturally to him, she knew.

"And when you didn't, like, turn those cheek pecks into real kisses or anything, like you said, I just thought you weren't into me like that. And if that was going to be your line...I wanted to keep doing things with you, so I wasn't gonna cross it."

She sat up and wrapped her arm around her knees. Could they have had something more all this time, and they'd been too stupid to see it? The reality of the past year came flooding back. Rusty, all the danger, the other Sharon, Julio getting shot, all the high profile cases that were so 'solve this NOW' in the media, Jack and all his drama, Ricky...it wasn't stupid. When had she had time to think about her own needs, examine her own life?

"Maybe it was more a maze than a line, Andy. Things were so crazy all year, when we did get together, I just wanted to relax. Not deal with anything complicated."

She could almost see him nodding in agreement. "And there would have been complications. As Provenza reminds me every time he knows we've gone...somewhere together."

"You mean every time he knows we've gone on a _date_. As he and the kids would say."

They finally laughed at the same time and she had to admit it felt good.

"Oh, Andy...do you think _they_ secretly think we've been jumping each other's bones all year? How funny would that be?" Other than the potential for workplace disaster, if not handled right, she added in her mind.

Silence.

"Andy?"

"Sorry, I got a little distracted by your 'humorous' little image there. A year's worth of Sharon Raydor...um, yeah...not sugarplums dancing in my head right now."

"Lieutenant Flynn, you are _not_ going there. Not now, not ever." She let some of the sternness slip from her voice. "At least, not over the phone."

Now she really wished she could see his face. She could just imagine him delving into the layers of that statement...the assumptions, the hint of possibility. He'd be blushing, she just knew it.

"How did we get from me figuring you never wanted to be around me again to ...what would you call this? Phone 'not-gonna-talk-about-sex'?"

"Right now I'm going to call it 'forgiveness with a side of probation'." And she was going to ignore the sudden heat she felt at him just saying the word "sex" in her ear. Oh, yes, this could work. Now that the possibility was laid in front of her, she could see it...and the mental double entendre of "laid" gave her another flickering spark.

This...the flirting, teasing part of being with a potential lover..._this_ is what had been missing. She hadn't and he hadn't and they'd let themselves slip under each other's radar.

Well, she wasn't so sure she'd slipped under _Andy's_ radar. And she'd be revisiting "What did you feel and when did you feel it?" before things went too much further. She wasn't kidding about the probation part. He had some proving himself to do, some amends to make.

She hoped he could do it. She could see the door before them, waiting to open if she could trust him again. Friendship, trust, and intimacy in one man...had she ever really had that? Not since her first year or two with Jack.

Maybe not even then.

"Um, Captain? What're the terms of probation going to be?" He sounded like her friend Andy again, and she grinned as relief swept over her. She really had not wanted to lose that if she didn't have to.

"We'll talk about it tomorrow, Lieutenant. I've made Chief Taylor aware of our friendship outside of work, and now I'll need to tell him it appears to be escalating."

He finally chuckled. "Oh, man...Provenza's gonna have a cow."

Sharon thought of the number of times she'd seen Patrice's image pop up on Lieutenant Provenza's phone recently.

"Maybe not. He might surprise us. He's been a little less curmudgeonly lately."

"What about the kids? Nichole, Rusty?"

This felt right, too...them talking about what they were doing. Acknowledging where they were, where they'd like to go.

""Oh, I thought we'd take Nichole and Rusty to lunch this week, let them know we're considering adding sexual activity to our relationship, since they're so interested in our personal business."

Now she wished they were having this talk in person even more. Especially since it sounded like he might need help to keep from choking.

"Sharon, you wouldn't!"

"See, that's why people date, Andy. Not to show their worth to their kids. It's to get to know each other better. Learn who the other person really is."

The silence on the other end of the line made her wonder if the call had been dropped. He finally spoke again.

"So, if I'd been honest about everything before, we could be past all this already and into the real thing, a real relationship, if that's where this is going."

She felt his bone-deep regret and knew what he was thinking. Their time together, if that's how things went, was finite. It always was, for everybody, but she felt the calendar page-flips a little more keenly as the years went by, and she knew he did, too.

"That's about the size of it, yes."

"I'm an idiot," he groaned.

"You have your moments, I agree," she said. "But I could have dug a little deeper, too. I'll take that part of it." She yawned into the phone. "Sorry...it's been a long day. Long night, too."

"I know what you mean. I'm gonna re-shelve these books-yeah, I really did box everything up-and get some sleep. At least I feel like I _can_ sleep now."

"Me, too. We'll talk more tomorrow." Something he'd said earlier came back to her. Should she? Was it too early?

Oh, hell. Neither of them were getting any younger. Why not?

"And, Andy? Just so you know...I'd have checked 'yes.' She ended the call before he could say anything.

Maybe they both could have some sugarplum dreams.


End file.
